For many of us, Konami is a beloved gaming company that has ownership of some of the most beloved IPs in the industry. A lot of us older gamers know this well. Metal Gear, Contra, Castlevania, Dance Dance Revolution, Yugioh, Gradius, Suikoden, Tokimeki Memorial, Vandal Hearts, and more all fall under their umbrella. Their numbers grew more in August of 2012 when they absorbed Hudson Soft. This added games such as Bloody Roar, Star Soldier, Bonk, Bomberman, and Adventure Island to their list of properties.

Part of what made these franchises so great was the developers behind them. Hideo Kojima created Metal Gear. Castlevania had a lot of people that developed it. But the originals were Akihiko Nagata, Nobuhiro Matsuoka, and Noriyasu Togakushi. Suikoden was helmed by Yoshitaka Murayama, etc. Over time on the backs of these developers and the properties they created, Konami had enjoyed a status that put them on a level playing field with Square Enix, Capcom, Namco Bandai, and Sega.

From the early days of the Nintendo Entertainment System to around 2015, Konami could always be depended upon to bring a quality product to the gaming masses. Then changes came. Hideki Hayakawa, the CEO made the point to push further into mobile and pachinko and farther away from traditional games. A year or two later, a lot of negative underlying issues started to come about. In June 2017, Japan’s Newspaper, Nikkei reported clashes between Konami and their lead developing unit, Kojima Productions. Allegedly, Konami wasn’t allowing Kojima Productions to file paperwork for health insurance. This, along with other things eventually pushed Kojima to leave Konami and go independent.

Another instance that was reported was Konami allegedly started to file complaints against any company that attempted to hire ex-Konami employees. This part is just my opinion, but this accusation is particularly damaging because this makes other companies veer away from hiring potentially good talent, thus harming the industry as a whole. Then there’s the inhumane issue of spitefully making sure individuals stay unemployed. We’re way past the point of “going too far” when a company is purposely stopping people from putting food on the table. Ex-employees couldn’t even speak out because Konami would immediately threaten them with legal action if they did so.

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Then you have to take into account when Koji Igarashi left. Igarashi was one of the more recent developers of Castlevania. His 3D Castlevania games didn’t do very well commercially. Castlevania: Judgement was particularly poor in the sales department. That was when Castlevania was given to the European development team, Mercury Steam. Now I can’t confirm or deny this, but rumor has it that Igarashi didn’t even want to make Castlevania Judgement in the first place and Konami pushed him to do it. When you look at his success with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night along with the Game Boy Advance Castlevania games, it’s clear where his love and passion are. If you need further proof of that, look at Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.

Hideki Hayakawa’s hard U-turn on everything that made Konami what it was really did a number on Konami’s reputation. Yes, they were making a profit every which way from Pachinko and gambling. But it came at the expense of their core. Any gamer can tell you, there was a time when they felt that Konami was only good for licensing out their IPs for easy Pachinko cash grabs. A stigma that’s still there even now to a large extent.

Eventually, they did decide that they were going to focus on games again. But here is where the skeptics come in. Over time, due to Konami’s office politics and bad treatment of their employees, a lot of top talent left. And the few that stay through it all were also let go eventually. So that begs the question. Why are they saying they want to focus on traditional gaming again if they no longer have the talent to make it happen? One word, outsourcing. Konami is now putting their historic franchises into the hands of mainly new, unproven, or average developers from outside their company. From a fiscal standpoint, one would assume this is a good idea in the short term. It costs less to send the IP out to outside developers that can work cheaper compared to the quality in-house developers they once had. Not to mention contractors don’t get company insurance. However, in the long term, this can hurt Konami in the long term because with cheaper, less experienced developers can come lesser quality of the overall product.

When Konami first mentioned they were going to make traditional games again, it was met with more optimism than skepticism. The Dreamer in me veers to optimism. But the realist in me is on the skeptic side. Any developers that had experience with the story, game development, lore crafting, and experience with these storied franchises are gone from the company. And we’re expected to believe contractors with no track record or average track records at best should be trusted with some of the most historic franchises in the industry? Yeah, no thank you. I have a feeling that Konami’s long history of employee mistreatment combined with being cheap is going to start paying negative dividends as these games come out. Anyway, let’s look at some of the games’ announced and/ or released ever since their renewed focus on gaming.

The first game we’ll talk about is Contra Rogue Corps. Contra Rogue Corps was developed by Toylogic and released in 2019. Now at first, you’d think the game would turn out well since it’s headed by Contra veteran Nobuya Nakazato. He’s the director responsible for both Contra: The Alien Wars and Contra Hard Corps. Not to mention being a producer and director for Contra Shattered Soldier. So with that, you’d think the game was in good hands having someone familiar with the franchise. But when the game was released, the reception was largely negative. In fact, you’d almost think Toylogic is ashamed of the release. When you go to their website and click under works, there is mention of their other game projects past, present, and future. But Contra Rogue Corps. isn’t even listed. That in itself is telling. This might serve as a lesson. Just because someone has or had familiarity with the franchise doesn’t mean a new iteration will be good or do well. We have to keep in my Nobuya Nakazato has been away from the franchise since 2002 prior to this. And what worked in the past won’t always translate out well in the future. Ok, now let’s look at another game.

Silent Hill is the horror franchise Konami started way back in the Playstation 1 era to compete with Resident Evil. And this franchise, just like the rest is currently being outsourced to numerous developers and publishers. Silent Hill: Ascension is being developed by Bad Robot Productions and Behavior Interactive. Silent Hill: Townfall is being developed by No Code and published by Annapurna Interactive. And the Silent Hill 2 Remake is being developed by Bloober Team. Most of these developers don’t even have games under their name that are of any note. And Bloober Team in particular has never had games that people really gravitate to. Out of all Konami’s franchises, this one has the potential to have the most negative backlash thrown its’ way because they’re hitting the consumer with all these different visions from different developers. Now we move to arguably Konami’s most iconic IP.

Metal Gear is arguably Konami’s most iconic IP. It’s the franchise Kojima started and had the most success with. But the big elephant in the room here is that like with all of their other franchises, this one won’t be immune to outsourced development either. Konami has already publicly told the world Kojima won’t be a part of this project. This is the one franchise they should have done everything in their power to get Kojima on board with. Reason being, we’ve seen Metal Gear without Kojima on two occasions. And both times, the results were poor. There was Snake’s Revenge, published under Konami’s now defunct brand, Ultra all the way back in 1990. Then there was 2018’s Metal Gear Survive. So the fact that we’ve seen how this story played out twice before makes it baffling that they would dare to try this a third time. But there is one more franchise we need to discuss.

Castlevania is right on par with Metal Gear in terms of importance to both Konami and gaming as a whole. Which makes it a bit confusing as to why a new game hasn’t been announced as of now. We already know the game, if one ever comes out, will be outsourced. Now granted, Castlevania has had many developers helm it, but at least all those developers were in-house and understood the lore and the franchise. There is no guarantee these contract developers will bring this franchise back to its’ old prominence. If they’re wise they’ll let Igarashi come back and work on the series. After all, he did say he’d be open to working on the franchise again if they asked. But considering how cheap Konami actively chooses to be I doubt they would ask based on what they’d have to pay him.

Now, I know personally I don’t see much success for Konami with the way they’re currently going about their business. But assuming this attempt to return to the top of gaming doesn’t do well, what does that mean for Konami?

One thing that can happen is simply Konami goes back to business as normal. If licensing their properties to third-party devs turns out badly, taking their ball and going back to their “Pachinko” home is probably the most likely thing to happen. They’ve already made it clear that’s where most of their money comes from and attention goes. Of course, that will just anger the gaming masses. But it’s not like Konami has ever shown themselves to particularly care about bad press anyway.

Another thing that can happen maybe they actually care about the IPs they own and hire experienced, in-house developers and take employee care seriously. This is not something I can see them doing. Even if they wanted to work fostering good relations with developers again, Konami’s alleged past history is well documented and that will deter them from attracting good talent. This is one of those situations where their reputation can and will precede them in a negative way. So unless they’re willing to give potential employees good binding concessions, this would be unlikely.

They can license their IP to more reputable developers. This actually dovetails with my prior reason about caring. Instead of rebuilding in-house teams, they can license to bigger publishers and developers. They’d get paid off the license fees and they’d have a better chance of having a quality product come as a result. The downside for them is that they wouldn’t be able to just bully them and throw their weight around like they would contract devs with little to no experience or name recognition.

All in all, if this cheap way of working doesn’t bear positive results for Konami, we may not see any more releases from some classic franchises. They already showed the world they have no problem focusing on gambling instead. And I think most gamers would agree, if that were to happen, we’d all lose.